Men were struggling in the water, but to stop for them was suicide

Harry Marrington was one of a small number of British troops in the US onslaught on Omaha beach

By Neil Tweedie

12:00AM BST 05 Jun 2004

The sailor

Omaha Beach - Bloody Omaha to the men who knew it - has impressed itself on the American psyche. Nowhere on D-Day was the fighting more desperate; and nowhere did Operation Overlord come closer to failure.

By midnight on June 6 1944 some 3,000 men had been killed or wounded on that fire-swept expanse of sand. At one point, as the casualties piled up in the surf and command of the operation approached breakdown, Gen Omar Bradley, head of the US First Army, was forced to conclude that the assault had suffered "irreversible catastrophe".

Yet, against the odds the landing succeeded, presenting American historians and Hollywood with a triumph of courage in adversity, to be replayed over and over again.

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But Omaha was not an exclusively American affair. In addition to the Royal Navy landing craft crews, a small number of British servicemen, almost totally forgotten now, shared that day on the beach in all its vivid horror. Harry Marrington, a 19-year-old sailor, was one of them.

Of all those on Omaha, he was one of the least-likely participants. Instead of being on his ship, he found himself pitched into the thick of the fighting - clinging to a steel beach obstacle amid a hail of shells and bullets.

"Three days before I thought we were going on shore leave," he explains. "And then there I was in the water, watching all that slaughter."

The road to Omaha began for Mr Marrington in 1942 when, at the age of 17, he enlisted in the Senior Service.

"I wanted the RAF, but they said I was too young. The Navy asked fewer questions so I walked round the corner and signed up with them."

He ended up on the former Grimsby trawler Olvina, which had been converted to a convoy escort. She was a happy ship, although little love was lost between the crew and their commander. "He was known as Cod Head, a fisherman made a two-and-a-half ringer (Lt-Cdr). He was moody, but he was bloody good. We owed our lives to him."

The Olvina's career was unglamorous, involving months of convoy work in the eastern Atlantic and English Channel. It was only on June 3 that the trawler's routine changed. "We'd dropped anchor at Plymouth after a convoy and thought we were in for some leave, but then we were ordered to store up," says Mr Marrington. "I thought we going out with another convoy."

Unbeknown to her crew, Olvina had become a minuscule part of Operation Neptune, the naval element in Overlord. Some 6,000 vessels ranging from battleships to small infantry landing craft were involved, 70 per cent of them British or Canadian.

From Plymouth she sailed to Fowey, in Cornwall, before reaching "Piccadilly Circus" on June 5, the assembly point for the invasion fleet south of the Isle of Wight. "You could have walked across the Channel without getting wet," says Mr Marrington.

After hours at sea came the coast of Normandy. Omaha was already a cauldron of fire when Olvina, which was helping to shepherd landing craft, arrived. Men were struggling in the water, but to stop for them was suicide.

"You were an instant target if you stopped. It was indescribable. We were pushing bodies aside as we went through the water."

Then, something happened to change Mr Marrington's memory of the war. A landing craft came alongside and it was explained that the Royal Navy beachmaster on Omaha, the man charged with keeping the troops and vehicles moving, was short of men. Would the captain release five of his crew? He agreed.

The next minute, Mr Marrington was on his way to the shore with no rifle and no training in how to invade a continent. As soon as he hit the shore, he was fighting for his life. "All hell let loose and everyone tried to find shelter. I thought, 'Oh, my God. What am I doing here?' I got behind one of the steel hedgehogs the Germans had put there to wreck landing craft. The bullets were pinging off it and every now and then I dived under the water to escape the firing."

His ordeal continued for two or three hours. "You were on your own. My only thought was to survive. There were terrible sights - a man with no arms and all that. I could hear people screaming and calling out for their mothers. But if you started worrying about them, you'd soon be joining them. I thought: how mad is it that people can do this to each other."

The thought of seeing his girlfriend Irene, who was serving in the Army, kept him going. The couple were married the following August and are still together. Eventually, he made it to the beach and sheltered in the sand. Joining his colleagues, he began helping to clear damaged vehicles. For two or three days he slept in the open, the time passing in a blur. All five of the men from the Olvina survived.

Mr Marrington is 79 now and lives in Fareham, Hants. Like many veterans, he put memories of the war to the back of his mind almost immediately after peace was declared. "You had to make a living and get on with things. It wasn't until the Normandy Veterans were formed about 20 years ago that people began to discuss it again."

And what of Omaha now? How would he sum his unexpected foray into the bloodiest battle of D-Day? Sheer bloody hell. The Devil was out there that day."